The Eyes of the Huntress

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘Of course,’ Lindsey said from behind her. The vibrant blonde’s voice was dull, uninflected. That was going to have to be fixed soon.

  Shil hit the button beside the cockpit door and was a little surprised to find that it opened. She stepped through and scanned the little room with its two flight chairs. There was no one there, which meant that T’ney was somewhere out in the city. He would be checking with whichever contact he planned to sell Lindsey to, and probably getting a coat for her: chances were she would not survive being taken to the buyer without one. Turning on her heel, Shil walked back into the passenger cabin, stepped up to Lindsey, and pulled the metal band from around her head.

  ‘Lindsey?’

  Lindsey blinked a couple of times, shook her head, and stared at Shil for a couple of seconds. ‘Sheila? Is that–’

  ‘It’s me. Except I’m Shil now. It’s a long story. Where’s the man who brought you here? Where’s T’ney?’

  A look of shock flashed across Lindsey’s face and she tried to stand up. Her harness stopped her and she collapsed back into her seat, tears starting to fall. ‘Sheila, he kidnapped me! He k-killed Marc! He–’

  ‘Marc’s not dead. He’s at home, waiting for me to bring you back to him.’ Shil knelt down and gripped Lindsey’s shoulders. ‘Linds, where did T’ney go?’

  ‘He d-didn’t say. He just went out a-and I didn’t care. I don’t know what he did to m-me, but I just did what he said.’

  Shil picked up the slave band. ‘This thing. It… stops you from thinking for yourself. When did he leave?’

  ‘I’m not… He’s been gone a while. Hours, I think.’ Lindsey’s eyes dropped and then came back up. ‘Sheila, what on Earth are you wearing? I have never seen you in anything that sexy. Even at pole class.’

  Shil laughed. ‘We’re not on Earth. This suit will stop a bullet, Linds, and anyway, I’m… a bit different now. I’m not really Sheila Napier now. My ID says I’m Shil, and that’s who I think of myself as.’

  ‘This really is a spaceship?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘And I’m really on another planet?’

  ‘Dromeli. It’s… quite a way across the galaxy, actually, and it’s damn cold outside.’

  ‘Oh.’ Lindsey’s eyes flicked to Araven and a slight grin formed on her lips. ‘Who’s your hunky friend?’

  ‘That’s Araven.’ Araven looked around at the mention of his name, then shrugged as Shil went on. ‘He’s a sort of interstellar cop, but he doesn’t speak much English. I went back to Earth with him to find T’ney and his friends.’

  ‘Wait. You are working with some interstellar cop to fight alien kidnappers? And how come he looks so human?’

  ‘Like I said, I’ve changed quite a bit since T’ney kidnapped me. And Araven’s usually green. Green skin, green hair. He’s still pretty hunky though. And he’s amazing in bed.’

  There was giggling and Araven turned to look. ‘We still have a fugitive to arrest,’ he said.

  Shil turned to look at him. ‘I know, but we have his merchandise. He’s coming back here, and when he does, we’ll have him. I just need to know whether he needs to die when he gets here.’

  ‘Shil…’

  But she had already turned back to Lindsey. ‘Linds, did T’ney… Did he touch you?’

  ‘I don’t– Oh! No. He didn’t… do that. Would he have?’

  Rather than answering, Shil looked around. ‘Apparently, you don’t need to worry about procedure. He didn’t touch her, so if he gives in, we can take him alive.’

  ‘Good.’ Araven replied. ‘That’s good.’ He looked away and then added, ‘And we can always hope the bastard resists.’

  ~~~

  T’ney stepped through the inner airlock door with a sigh. Dromeli was a great place to do this kind of business, but as a world, it sucked. Earth sucked for other reasons, primarily the lousy technology, but you could make up for that somewhat by taking a few little pleasures from home. Dromeli was an ice cube and there was no getting around that. Well, he had a coat for the woman and had even invested in something to show her off to the customers better. Sheila had been dressed for a night out and sex, which had been convenient, but Lindsey was in slacks and a sweater, evening-at-home clothes.

  He glanced at her, sitting placidly where he had left her. There was probably time enough to fuck her before they needed to leave, but… She had the pale skin, and she was pretty enough beyond that, but she did not have something Sheila had had. T’ney was not entirely sure what it was, but there had been something else about her. Then there was the slave band: sure, Lindsey would do anything he wanted, and he could even tell her she liked it and then she would, but Sheila’s disgust at what he had her do was probably the best part of the experience. No…

  Tossing the coat on a chair, T’ney threw the bikini he had bought into Lindsey’s lap. ‘Get undressed and put that on,’ he told her. Then he turned to the cockpit door and hit the release.

  For an instant, he wondered what he was seeing as the door opened. Then his brain caught up with his eyes: Sheila. Her hair was different, red and tightly woven into braids. Her breasts appeared firmer. He knew those breasts pretty well, and they looked firmer. She looked firmer: more tightly muscled and harder. The few wrinkles she had had were gone. The really major change was her eyes, which were glowing a fiery orange, and that was definitely not natural.

  ‘Sheila,’ he said, rather stupidly.

  Shil smiled. It was a bright, but rather malicious smile. ‘Hi, T’ney,’ she said, and then her fist slammed into his jaw.

  T’ney said something like ‘gnuff!’ and then his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed into a crumpled heap on the deck.

  ‘Oh wow, Shil!’ Lindsey said, reaching up to take the inactive slave band off. ‘Those self-defence classes really paid off.’

  Shil grinned at her; she had the feeling that Lindsey was treating the new name as more of a nickname, but she was using it. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘That was rather anticlimactic,’ Araven said, straightening up from where he had been crouched about three rows back from Lindsey. ‘And tell your friend I thought she was very brave.’

  ‘I was hoping he’d take more than one punch to put out. Oh well.’ Shil switched to English to add, ‘Araven thinks you’re brave. He said “very brave,” but I think he’s exaggerating a little to be complimentary.’

  ‘Considering all I had to do was sit here, I agree,’ Lindsey replied. She unbuckled her seat harness, picked up the lengths of string and cloth patches T’ney had thrown at her, and got to her feet. ‘If he’d wanted to watch me undressing… I’d have to be very brave to wear this.’

  Shil shrugged. ‘You’ve got the body to pull it off. I used to think I couldn’t wear things like that and now look at me.’

  ‘Oh, I–’

  ‘Take it home and wear it for Marc. I bet he’ll think you look good in it.’

  Lindsey’s cheeks coloured. ‘Probably. Um, what happens now?’ Her eyes widened. ‘What are you going to do about Brian?’

  ‘Now, Araven takes care of this piece of shit, and I take you back to my ship. We’ll get the paperwork out of the way as fast as possible, and I’ll take you…’ Shil trailed off, considering. ‘We might have to get a little creative about getting you back to Marc. I’ll see whether StarCorps will trust me to handle it. As for Brian… He can go fuck himself.’

  Lindsey shrugged. ‘I think that’s about all he has been doing since you left. He should be used to it by now.’

  The Cantarvey.

  Lindsey looked a little embarrassed to be naked in front of Shil, and Shil found that more amusing than she thought she should have. They had both seen each other nude in the changing rooms before, after pole practice and at the gym, but this was sort of different, somehow.

  ‘You’re going to get some rest,’ Shil said, largely ignoring Lindsey’s red cheeks, ‘and Cantarvey will see to getting you cleaned up.’

  Lindsey
blinked. ‘Your ship will?’

  ‘This is science fiction, Linds. The ship has an artificial intelligence controlling it.’ Shil steered Lindsey backward into the area of the bed field. ‘We don’t use beds.’

  ‘Hey!’ Lindsey squeaked as the field cut in and she began to float, thrashing wildly for a second until she realised she was just floating.

  ‘And I’ve got all these tiny robots which will come over and give you the best pore cleansing you have ever had.’

  ‘T-tiny robots?’

  ‘It’s perfectly safe. It kind of tickles a bit, but it’s… soothing.’ Shil switched to Gadek Taved. ‘Give her the full treatment, Cantarvey.’

  The AI’s voice sounded over the ship’s speakers. ‘You mean–’

  ‘Yes. She needs to sleep. And when she’s stopped panicking, she’ll enjoy it, and then she’ll sleep.’ She switched back to English and flashed Lindsey a smile. ‘Just relax. I’m going to leave you to it, but you can get me through Cantarvey any time. She speaks English.’

  ‘Okay, Shil.’ Lindsey twitched a little as the cleaning swarm got to work. ‘Oh, it does kind of tickle, but it’s not bad.’

  ‘No,’ Shil replied, hiding her smirk by turning for the door.

  ‘It’s actually kind of nice.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ The door opened, and Shil stepped through. The door began to close.

  ‘Oh! Shil? Shil, is it supposed to-ooo!’

  The door closed and Shil grinned at it. ‘I said more or less the same thing the first time you did that to me.’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ Cantarvey replied. There was a slight pause and then, ‘I have an urgent call from Araven.’

  ‘Put him through.’

  ‘Shil?’ Araven’s voice said into Shil’s head. ‘It’s D’nova. He got away from the corpsmen I assigned to bring him in.’

  Shil’s jaw clenched. ‘Where were they when he got away?’

  ‘I’ll send coordinates. Shil, he killed one of them, the other is in a critical condition. His shuttle’s locked down and under guard. He’s on foot, but he could be anywhere.’

  ‘I’ll find him. I’m not bringing him in alive this time, Araven.’

  ‘I did say he killed a corpsman, didn’t I? I’d like his head back so we can use it for ball games.’

  Dromdaria.

  The building was in one of Dromdaria’s crappier neighbourhoods, and Shil viewed that as saying a lot, considering what she thought of the city. Dirty, unpleasant neighbourhood, and a dirty, unpleasant building. Four storeys, four windows per floor. Some of the windows were boarded up and there were curtains drawn over the others. The door looked solid, but old: there was no paint on it and the wood was stained. Hell, it was a wooden door! This area had to go back to the beginnings of the city.

  Whatever, T’ney’s scent was here. She was sure he was inside, but she was also fairly sure he was not alone. Her force screen could handle a lot of damage, and so could her suit and her body, but she could not assume this was going to be easy. She needed to clear the way a little.

  Reaching to her boots, she pulled a pair of wedge-shaped micromissiles free and connected through to their command circuitry. It took a moment to program them, and then she tossed them out toward one of the unboarded windows. Catching themselves in mid-flight, the weapons accelerated toward the glass and ploughed through. There was a yell of surprise which turned into a shriek, and then Shil followed, vaulting through the shattered window, sword in hand. There was a man lying on the floor with two wounds driven clean through his body. Beside him lay a pistol, a blaster: the missiles had been programmed to attack anyone with a weapon. Almost anyone.

  ‘Lay down your weapons,’ Shil yelled at the top of her voice, ‘and you will not be harmed.’ There was the ripping crack of an electron gun firing somewhere on the ground floor, followed by a shriek. The little flying knives were too fast and small to give a good chance of being shot down, but people were going to try, and then become prime targets because they had.

  Shil stepped out into the corridor outside the room she had entered. There was no furniture around to give any indication of occupancy or give a purpose to the rooms. She looked around in time to see the missiles zipping up the staircase at the end of the hallway. There had been a single contact on this floor, after they had cleared the man on entry. It suggested that any others were above.

  She lifted her head and shouted again. ‘Throw down your weapons and you will not be harmed. I am here for T’ney D’nova. I don’t care about the rest of you.’

  There was another shriek from the next floor. They were not listening, but she did not really care about that either. Readying her sword, she started up the stairs.

  ‘Bitch! You die now!’ The words were Drotic and the speaker was a mean-looking dromelan who had obviously dropped his pistol before picking it up again. Shil signalled one of the flying knives as he fired but remained where she was as the pulses of energy went wide, scorching the wallpaper to her right. He was lining up for another shot when a slim, metal blade erupted through his chest on its way through from his back.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Shil said as he fell. Then she lifted her head. ‘T’ney! Don’t make me come up there and get you, you murdering son-of-a-whore!’ There was sound from upstairs and, rounding the bannister, Shil rushed up, the missile racing to get ahead of her.

  She rounded onto the upstairs landing and time slowed down. There was a man crouching at the far end, a laser rifle in his hands. It was a survival weapon, a compact carbine design with reduced power to give an increased number of shots. The beam sliced across her shield, producing a bright flare of light. Shil’s hand dipped to her boot, up, and out, and the man flinched back as her shuriken sank into his arm. His weapon dropped, and that saved him. The missiles had been programmed not to kill unarmed people and the weapon speeding toward him raised its aim and flew past at the last moment. That did not save him from Shil, however.

  Grabbing him by the front of his shirt, she hauled the dromelan to his feet. ‘Where is D’nova?’ The man threw a wild, left-handed punch, and just managed to throw himself entirely off balance. ‘That was your one chance,’ Shil told him. Then she slammed his face into a wall.

  Three rounds from an electron weapon hit Shil’s back, flaring against her shield. She turned, hearing an expletive in Daddari, and began to smile. ‘Oh, T’ney, it’s terrible that you think that way about me. I’ll have you know my mother was a regular churchgoer.’ She started for the next set of stairs.

  He was pointing a holdout weapon at her, presumably the one he had managed to hide somewhere on his person to use on the corpsmen. He fired again, causing her shield to flare and burning a section of the moth-eaten carpet. There was another expletive, more of an exasperated one, and he tossed the weapon aside. It was possible he was just annoyed that it was failing to achieve anything, but it might have just run out of charges. Shil began to run as he took off out of sight.

  His scent was strong in the air of the corridor, too strong to narrow his location down. Shil slammed a door open with her boot and there were shrieks from within. Her gaze flicked around the people, most of them women, chained up against the walls. They were scared, all of them. So, this was the place Lindsey had been going to end up. Shil figured that if T’ney did not die at her hand, his contacts might take him out for bringing her to their door. She would deal with the victims later.

  Two strides further on and she spotted the open door at the end of the corridor. He might have got his hands on something more dangerous than a holdout. He might have help. She edged closer, shifting her visual frequencies as she went. The walls were thin and she could see only one heat source. It looked like he was holding something, but it was not large, held in a single hand. Shil stepped around and through the door.

  ‘That’s close enough,’ T’ney said. What he was holding was a grenade. The room seemed to be the slavers’ armoury. There were weapons of all sorts, caseless projectile weapons through to particl
e beams and lasers, but T’ney had grabbed one of the handful of grenades. His thumb was poised over the firing button. ‘Want to try that fancy shield on this? One press and you’ll be painted over the wall.’

  There was some chance she could survive the blast… ‘You’d die too, T’ney. I don’t think you’re going to commit suicide.’

  ‘What are my options? StarCorps will take me off-world and put me in an orbital prison for the rest of my life. Death would be better than that. What happened to you, Sheila? Where’d you get that shield? What’s with the kinky outfit? The Sheila I knew would never wear something like that.’

  ‘Oh, you killed the Sheila you knew. You kidnapped her from her backwater little world and got her sent to Veldro prison. Three months in there and I was Shil, favoured plaything of the toughest guy in the aliens’ wing, and cellmate of the toughest woman in the prison. And then… No, you wouldn’t believe it if I told you.’

  ‘Try me.’ He was affecting an amused smile.

  ‘I became the Virtue of Justice, the Huntress. It’s an old vedan thing. I’m supposed to punish those who disobey the old vedan law codes, and you… You really disobeyed some of those codes.’

  ‘That’s–’

  ‘Not that it’d matter. This is personal. I don’t really care that you grabbed me. My life was kind of shitty and I’m way better off now. But then you went and took Lindsey. That was a really bad idea, T’ney. Really bad.’ She took half a step toward him and his hand went up, waving the grenade.

  ‘Do you really want to die, Sheila?’

  ‘It’s possible I can’t,’ she replied, ‘but let’s not test that.’ Her sword swept upward, the edge slicing through T’ney’s elbow cleanly and sending both limb and grenade spinning to the ground. T’ney’s eyes widened, but this time he stayed upright. It made no difference: Shil was already turning, spinning on the spot and shifting her grip to take her sword in both hands as she swung around. The ultrafine, ultrahard edge sliced through the navidad’s neck and his head followed his arm toward the floor.